Category: Career Guidance

Let me introduce you to Aaron Brown. Aaron is VP of Engineering at MadHive, a company building cutting-edge advertising solutions running on blockchain technology. We’re thrilled to have him contributing his expertise to our Blockchain Developer Nanodegree program.

Aaron is a passionate blockchain advocate who envisions using this emerging technology to balance privacy, security, and transparency concerns across a wide variety of industries. His experience recruiting people into the blockchain space has been crucial for ensuring our curriculum is laser-focused on what industry needs, and what our students need to learn in order to secure rewarding roles.

We spoke with Aaron recently to get his insights on the current hiring landscape for blockchain developers.

Now is an excellent time to learn valuable new skills, refresh existing ones, and focus on career-centric soft skills that enhance your hireability

News today from the Labor Department bodes well for job seekers at all levels of experience. The unemployment rate is falling, wages are increasing, and yet there is still a strong sense of demand, as employers continue to struggle to fill roles within their organizations.

How to put the “work” in “network”

It is virtually impossible to overestimate the importance of networking when discussing the job search process. You might even say, networking IS the job search!

While learning for the sake of career advancement is critical to your long-term success, it’s only part of the equation. Job seekers often have a difficult time moving from learning to acting, but it’s only when you act, that you produce opportunity.

In simplest form, networking means getting out the door, both literally and figuratively. It means proactively connecting with people. It means building relationships, and embracing the truism that relationships are a two-way street—networking is as much about helping others as it is about being helped.

Networking takes on an added dimension of importance when you’re changing careers, or if you come from what might be considered a “non-conventional” background. In these cases, you have to effectively contextualize your experience, tell your story, and make the case for why you’re right for the job, even if your background doesn’t line up with the role’s requirements. This is best accomplished by forging direct connections, and pursuing opportunities to speak openly and directly with individuals in positions to lend their support.

Put another way, you have to enable people to know the real you. Because you know you’re right for the job. But do they?

Job interviews are stressful. There is no getting around this. No matter how accomplished you are, how experienced, how qualified, interviews are high-stakes affairs, and a wicked case of nerves is to be expected.

Can meditation help?

It can, provided you still perform the rest of your due diligence. You still need relevant skills and experience. You still need to prepare. You still need to research the company, rehearse your answers, and be ready to prove yourself in challenge or test. And therein lies the real problem with interviews, and the real reason why meditation has something important to offer.

Even when we ARE prepared for a job interview, we often still fumble. Why? The answer: Pressure. Even the best of us crumble under pressure. And that’s where meditation can help. When you meditate, you slow down, and you calm down.

Your story—and more importantly, how you tell it—is one of your most important assets when it comes to competitive differentiation in the hiring landscape. Your story is comprised of those things that make you unique, and if you can contextualize these items effectively, your story becomes your greatest strength.

By 2019, over 2.6 million industrial robots are expected to be launched into operation across the world. Demand for employees with the skills to build and program these machines is already skyrocketing. Organizations such as American Robotics, a non-profit founded by Carnegie Mellon University, are predicting that more than 500,000 new manufacturing jobs will emerge in the next decade alone.

Embarking on a robotics career begins today, if you want to be at the forefront of this incredible industry.

But how do you get started? What do you need to learn, and where can you learn it? Who are the thought leaders shaping a vision for the future? Where are the jobs going to be, and who are the companies leading the way? What kinds of salaries do robotics engineers earn?

We’ve got the answer to all these questions and more in an exclusive Career Guide we’ve developed with our partners at Paysa. If you’re interested in pursuing a robotics career, this is your complete guide. To access this free Career Guide, just enter your email address below:

Today, we are witnessing a rapidly-changing employment landscape that is the direct result of extraordinary technological advancement. These changes are profound enough that old rules about creating a “career path” are being rewritten in real time. On the employer side, the pressure to fill so-called “new collar” jobs is challenging organizations to pursue new strategies for identifying and recruiting qualified talent. On the employee side, everyone from first-time job seekers, to mid-career professionals, to those approaching traditional retirement age, is having to reevaluate their skillsets.